Tips for Working at Home

Most all of my programming work over the years has been at home. The only office work I did was in the 1990s and there I was managing projects and programming teams. But when I was hired to work in-house for the company I had done contract work I was hired as a technical director and not as a programmer. One of my first tasks turn out to be bringing some programmers who worked at home in-house. They were having problems doing remote work and one was remarked how happy he was to be brought into the office.

Working at home isn’t easy for some. It takes certain discipline. But there are a few tricks for it. When I worked at home I always took care of any errands, exercise, etc at the start of the day. This way none of these things like grocery shopping or going for my walk didn’t hang over my head as a distraction while I tried to work.

Now, this might be more difficult for someone in a family situation but another trick is to know when to end the day before you burn out. It is counter productive to push yourself beyond your limits. So folks with families I knew who worked at home set it up so they were done in time to spend the evening with their family.

Of course you probably need to let managers know about schedule and they will need to adjust for it finding you are not available at 9 AM but try anytime after 1 PM. One other thing about doing this given some of the commutes people face these days is you will be fresh when you start work and not worn out from a morning commute. That leads to more productivity.